Filed under: inspiration, research | Tags: contemporary, craft, creativity, creatures, design, Donna Wilson, fair, favourites, Lustre, market, price, quality, toys
Lustre lived up to it’s name and reputation. High quality design and craft, all deliciously displayed for me to drool over.
I was pleased to see Donna Wilson’s creatures there, although sad they were in a glass cabinet and I didn’t get to meet her. I got to have a good look at her creature calendar and a Sleepy Pom notebook which I wasn’t aware was in production, they were lovely, creative and well priced. There were very few other ‘toys’ at the show, which I found interesting. Although I have had my fill of flower corsages – aren’t people fed up with these by now?
The quality is certainly very high and the prices reflected this – not your average ‘craft fair’. It gave me hope though, as my products are likely to come in priced at the higher end of the market, especially with the raw material being organic and therefore a bit more expensive than your standard wool. I think they wouldn’t look out of place.
I was surprised that there wasn’t more variety and creativity in the display of the work – some of it tried too hard and lost the products in the process.
Here are some of my favourites (i.e. I’d buy from them if I had the cash):
KEN EARLEY’s ceramics
Lauren Van Helmond’s little collage sculptures
David knight’s glass forms
SUILVEN PLAZALSKA’s contemporary jewellery
LYNSEY WALTER’s fun and fresh felt
Filed under: research | Tags: craft, East Midlands, Lustre, market, research
Through a bit of online research I realise a few of the key shows, such as Origin, have been and gone – but thankfully I have one right on the East Midlands doorstep in the form of LUSTRE - Contemporary Craft Maker’s Market on Saturday 10 – Sunday 11 November. I’ll see if anyone else in the group fancies a day out.
Filed under: knitting, reflection, supplies | Tags: , evaluation, experiments, market, methods, presentation, pure wool, quality, shop, techniques, yarn
Went to the yarn shop in the markethall this morning to buy some cheap pure wool (UK produced, at least) to do some tests. Mainly for felting but also to play with forms and construction.
I am thinking about the work I have made so far (with a view to selecting images for next week’s presentation) and I came to the conclusion that I have used many techniques and explored many methods but they tend to stop when I feel I have conquered them within one object. Whilst this drives me to move onto the next method, it often means that the last one remains in a sort of limbo: explored, creation complete, but without the quality and ’wow’ factor that comes with an object where you know truly what you are doing and how it will turn out. What I am trying to say, so far they have all been experiments.
Now I have a chance to look back over what I have done, evaluate what I like, what worked well, how it could be used again and pull this all together to make some pieces that I feel are of a standard I am going to be happy to exhibit. If I put one up here per week from now until the New Year, it will keep me focussed on all that I have experimented with until now and highlight things that I might like to work on.
